The first shrine I want to add to this site will be about my hometown and about small cities in general. Even though nowadays I live in a unimpressive suburbs of a big city in Poland, there is something special about medium or small cities that have some iconic but not widely recognizable monuments. My hometown is Zamość, a city with 60 thousands people, that consist of the ring of standard Polish city districts with commie blocks, schools, supermarkets and so on, and the central old town district that is just like an Italian renaissance city fortress. The photo above shows the heart of Zamość, the Town Hall standing next to Great Market square that is so iconic for me that every time I see this place in person, I'm just so proud of it!
That game is the closest thing that allowed me to make my imagination draw some well functioning cities including sprawling regions with enough precision and the interface was pleasant enough to do so. Even if the UI is a bit outdated, it absolutely has its early sim-esque charm, and the lighting, nature and buildings look gorgeous. It's not ideal though, it crashes (sometimes before I manually 'auto-save') and NAM mod with advanced transport modes was puzzling to use and many times led to game crashing (at least on my PC). I didn't play SimCity 1 and 2, but SimCity3000 was very much playable but much more limiting than the forth version.
The big part of why I want this whole Lankarta app happen is that it could possible bring new life to that game for me, as the Network Map functionality could allow to create custom non-grid like regions where cities could be linked wheather or not they stick to each other.
Say what you want about European Union but open borders between are such a blessing as a tourist. When Schengen agreement is not suspended for some reason, you can cross borders between EU countries however you like. That's why about 2 years ago I packed my bike on a train and arrived to Suwałki, a city in north-eastern corner of Poland, about 30km from the border with Lithuania. If you're into geopolitics you may know the place called "Suwałki Gap", as some out-of-touch strategists might put it "one of the most dangerous place in Europe" but for everyone else, it's just a quaint rural area where the Slavic culture of Poland and Baltic culture of Lithuania live side by side in harmony.
Cycling is the excellent way to explore the region as roads there are quite empty, hills are not that steep and there is plenty of villages and lakes to stop by and rest a bit. That was my first time ever when I crossed the border by bike and that's such a great way to see in detail how the environment and infrastructure changes between countries. During my trip I visited Suwałki - major city, Wigierski National Park with beautiful Wigry lake, town of Sejny and former border control compound with nearby store that sells beverages and other specifically Lithuanian foods. Right next to a border I met a guy that just at that time, traveled from Edinburgh, Scotland, throughout the coast of Baltic Sea up to his hometown in Lithuania! Super nice to meet him, check out his other bike journeys on @justas_juozaitis Instagram as he's travelling way across the Americas!
On Lithuanian side I visited Lazdijai (Łoździeje in Polish), tiny town with a nice central square and IKI and Maxima supermarket chains (We don't have those in Poland and I like to visit regular stores in other countries, just my thing). After a break and checking-in hostel I took a short 20km spin through the fields and forests to take a look at Dusia Lake (Jezioro Duś), the third largest lake in Lithuania. Just by wondering around the wildernesses I've noticed there are a lot more abandoned buildings than on the Polish side. Lithuania is quite a bit less densely populated, but somehow attracts more storks! The next day I head back to Poland by a different, partially unpaved route to the borderline Galadusys Lake (Jezioro Galaduś), seen on the photo above. The border was so close to that lovely pier that I was able to literally swim back to Poland, but I had to go back the land for my bike. In Poland I've visited a bunch of bilingual villages with the most prominent one, Punśk (Punskas in Lithuanian) where I took a dinner break in the restaurant that serves cold soups, absolutely refreshing dish in the middle very hot summer day on a bike 💙. The municipal village of Puńsk was the first officially bilingual region in Poland I've ever visited and even though I didn't spend much time there, people really spoke in two languages! All and all I highly recommend travelling by bike through border regions of Europe as it gives great and very detailed perspective on how countries meet each other! I hope I will visit someday the rest of Lithuania, the rest of Baltic states and maybe some other border regions or even European tripoints!
Ačiū Lietuvai LTPL for a great time!
Buttons with links to other neocities sites as the pre social media internet tradition goes, not that many here so far :) Maybe I'll join some webring that my website can fit thematically.
Section constantly work in progress, too much stuff. In general, if something is closely related to computers and/or maps, I'm in!
Have you ever seen those youtube videos with some DJs in the yellow tiled room and caption "I listen to all genres"? Yeah that's my music taste. Also, a lot of silly stuff and I can't play any instruments, even Guitar Hero.
Here's the list of a bunch of my most defining favourite songs (artists with multiple favourite songs are in bold). This list will never be complete.
I used to dislike songs in my native languages (Polish), I found the lyrics of many popular songs to be corny or too stupid. Songs in English are often excessively silly, but when it's not your native language, the feeling is not striking. Nowadays I appreciate Polish songs way more as the lyrics even when corny, more often hits home as an adult and my better understanding of English uncovers the silliness of some songs that I enjoy musically.
The ratio of words that I've read in books to the words in all articles/mews/websites/tutorials/wikis is about 1:100 and that's not great, but at least it's something. Here's a bunch of books that I actually remember:
So yeah, some Polish required readings, very basic political novels and a bit of Lem's sci-fi. Oh and "The Picture of Dorian Gray" thanks to PewDiePie's recommendation 👍
I'm not an avid gamer but there were a couple of games that I played for hours and hours
YouTube was for many years and still is my main source of conveniently delivered knowledge and entertainment, I'm getting olldscool as I refuse to use tiktok for that. I used to follow some more famous American youtubers and watched closely what's going on in Polish youtube. Many of them become pretty uniteresting after many years, even tho their classic content is golden.
Long and forever unfinished list of great youtube channels:
Links, categories and descriptions are in progress, or not, I'm too lazy
I've never watched that much TV serieses or Netflix, that's why that section is preety empty and misses some key serieses that everybody watched.
The perpetually unfinished list of international movies that I think that are quite fun to watch, I guess I'll have to divide movies as aaction movies and comedies are mixed here
Polish films with descriptions are in progress
The perpetually unfinished list of international movies that I think are at least somewhat meaningful for me, I must divide all those movies better as teenage dramas with somewhat serious topics are mixed with more mature stuff
Polish films with descriptions are in progress